OBSOLETE Improving the representation of muscle biology in the biological process and cellular component ontologies.

Jennifer Deegan nee Clark (1, 5), Alexander D. Diehl (1,7), Elisabeth Ehler (2), Georgine Faulkner (3), Erika Feltrin (4), Jennifer Fordham (2), Midori Harris (1, 5), Ralph Knoell (6) David Hill (1, 7), Paolo Laveder (8), Alessandra Nori (8), Carlo Reggiani (8), Vincenzo Sorrentino (9), Giorgio Valle (4), Pompeo Volpe (8) (1. The Gene Ontology Consortium, 2. King's College, London, UK, 3. ICGEB, Trieste, Italy, 4. CRIBI - University of Padua, Padua, Italy 5. EMBL-EBI, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK, 6. University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany 7. Mouse Genome Informatics, Bar Harbor, ME, 8. University of Padua, Padua, Italy, 9. University of Siena, Siena, Italy); 2007

A meeting focused on the biology of skeletal and smooth muscle has been held on 24-25 July 2007 at the University of Padua, Italy, as a collaboration with the GO consortium and CRIBI Biotechnology Center. The aims of this effort were to provide a comprehensive representation of muscle biology in the biological process and cellular component ontologies and to improve the organization of muscle-specific terms to better describe the current knowledge of biological mechanisms in muscle tissue. Thus, the collaboration brought together experts in several areas of muscle biology and physiology who carried out a thorough review of the existing GO muscle terms as these terms were largely created by non-muscle experts using older definitions. In particular, several areas are being addressed actively in current research: the biological processes of muscle contraction, muscle plasticity, muscle development, and muscle regeneration; and the sarcoplasmic reticulum and membrane delimited compartments. This work resulted in the addition of 159 new terms and in the modification of 57 terms to bring them in line with current usage. Funding for the meeting was provided by Italian Telethon Foundation.